History for August 31

History for August 31 - On-This-Day.com
Caligula (Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) 0012, Maria Montessori 1870, Arthur Godfrey 1903


William Saroyan 1908, Alan Jay Lerner 1918, Eldridge Cleaver 1935


1881 - The first tennis championships in the U.S. were played.


1920 - The first news program to be broadcast on radio was aired. The station was 8MK in Detroit, MI.


1920 - John Lloyd Wright was issued a patent for "Toy-Cabin Construction," which are known as Lincoln Logs. (U.S. patent 1,351,086)


1940 - Lawrence Olivier and Vivian Leigh were married.


1964 - California officially became the most populated state in America.


1980 - Poland's Solidarity labor movement was born with an agreement signed in Gdansk that ended a 17-day strike.


1994 - A cease-fire was declared by the Irish Republican Army after 25 years of bloodshed in Northern Ireland.


1998 - A ballistic missile was fired over Japan by North Korea. The missile landed in stages in the waters around Japan. There was no known target.